


Scenes From an Anarcho-Primitivist Life

by alpheratz



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: Best Friends, Gen, anarcho-primitivism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 20:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/739620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpheratz/pseuds/alpheratz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Friendship is TOTALLY savage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scenes From an Anarcho-Primitivist Life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inlovewithnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/gifts).



Andy’s bedroom is even more of a mess than usual, and Pete knows messes. There’s something brown dripping from the ceiling. It’s probably not diarrhea. That would smell worse. Pete is _fascinated_.

“Dude, did you put Menthos in Coke again?” Pete asks. “That’s an outdoor activity. Or so I’m told.”

It's not that Pete cares, it's just that parents definitely care. Andy’s mom is really busy, but she will probably notice this.

Andy scratches his elbow, where brown is caked on too, and shifts a pile of comics off the bed so Pete can sit. “I was making a poster.”

Pete grins. “Paint-flinging. Awesome technique. Won’t your mom be pissed, though?”

Andy’s luck is his usual, which is to say no luck at all, because Mrs. Hurley is apparently home after all, despite the deceptively quiet house. 

“Andy believes in anarcho-primitivism now,” says Mrs. Hurley archly. “Pete, take your shoes off in my house.”

“It means I reject authority structures and the idea that one must conform to societally imposed standards of living,” Andy explains while Pete mumbles sorry to Andy’s mom and toes off his kicks. "There are some other things too."

“And that’s why Andy’s not going to be able to play this weekend,” explains Mrs. Hurley. “Not until he cleans his room to societally imposed standards.”

Andy makes a face at him, turned so Mrs. Hurley can't see, and Pete cracks up, forgetting to turn away too.

"Maybe Andy won't be able to play next weekend either," says Mrs. Hurley with narrowed eyes, and Pete quickly schools his expression.

Mrs. Hurley only rolls her eyes - she's okay for an adult - and leaves the room, leaving the door open. Andy sighs, shrugging his shoulders, and Pete nods in sympathy. Parents. 

"I'm serious about anarcho-primitivism," Andy says after a while.

Pete tears his eyes away from the stain on the ceiling. It's been migrating bit by bit, spreading like a fluid animal. "You're gonna start a commune? In a cave?"

"Yeah, actually, but not in a cave" says Andy, and launches into an explanation Pete can't really follow, but he gives it a shot anyway.

Pete figures the commune idea will fizzle out like all ideas tend to, in Pete's experience, but it doesn't.

For instance, one time the van breaks down in a Dakota. 

"Which Dakota are we in, exactly?" Andy asks Pete. 

Pete shrugs. Joe and Patrick had been in charge of driving and the directions, and they were the ones dealing with the breakdown. It was dangerous to stay by the van. Not because it was smoking or anything, but because Joe and Patrick were grim-faced and sullen, respectively, Joe trying to call a tow truck with his dying phone and Patrick sitting on the ground and ignoring everyone as long as they kept their distance, noise-canceling headphones jammed over his hat. 

Andy seems to be pretty into Dakota. He's taking huge gulps of air and sort of waving his arms while Pete is getting kind of cold in his hoodie. 

"This is the kind of place I'd like to live," Andy confesses to Pete. 

Pete looks around them. It's flat in every direction. If he squints, he can see some trees and bushes in the distance. "It's like a fifteen-minute hike if you want to just pee, dude."

"Like you need your privacy for that," says Andy. "I mean, like... the land."

Oh. Pete suddenly gets it. "The commune."

"Yeah!" Andy says, grinning. "Just think, if my commune was right here, we wouldn't have to call a tow truck. I could just fix it with my tools."

"You don't have any tools now, what makes you think you'll have them on your commune?" Pete sits down where the ground looks dry. It's pretty nice out, actually. "Aren't tools a symbol of humanity's divorce from its roots, anyway?"

Andy slaps Pete's head and Pete drops and rolls. "Aren't trucks, Hurley?" he says breathlessly, getting up a few feet away and grinning. Taunting Andy is completely awesome. Andy always thinks so too, eventually, but it's a sign of how much Andy is into this place that Andy grins back right away.

"Yeah, fuck you too," Andy says and slings an arm around Pete's shoulders. 

The commune, when it happens, is both underwhelming and terrifying.

"Dude," says Pete after a long pause. Andy picked him up at the airport in his new, giant pickup truck, and then they drove, and now they are on some land that Andy says is his. It’s half sand and half grass and a lot of lake.

"Awesome, right?" says Andy with, like, pride and satisfaction in his voice. It's a weird tone for Pete to hear. “Lakefront, man.”

"This is your commune."

Andy nods vigorously. "Just as you see it."

"And you have a house here?" Pete inquires carefully. There are houses around – they drove through a normal neighborhood to get here – but the expansive, proprietary arm gesture Andy made to indicate his new domain did not include the nearest one, which is kind of… distant. To put it mildly.

“Oh,” Andy says and points at the one that Pete was eyeing as the most probable contender. “Yeah, I’m making an offer on that house. It just hasn’t come through yet.”

Right. “So we’re sleeping in your truck?”

"Ah!" says Andy, holding up a finger like a college professor and opening his mouth wide to prevent Pete from interrupting with more dumb questions. "Hold on a minute."

He opens the backseat of the pickup and drags out a few dark green sacks. Oh. Oh, shit.

"We're camping," Pete ventures. "Until my flight out next week." It seems like a solid guess.

Andy beams, and Pete squints at his face to make sure, because he's never seen Andy quite that happy. "Help me put it up."

Pete's experience with tents is limited and kind of traumatic, and Andy is as much of a suburban kid as he is, so he figures they'll end up spreading their sleeping bags on the ground and draping the tents over themselves. Andy must've done this before, though, when he came out to buy the land, because he actually gives it a good go, hammering in the stakes and giving Pete mostly comprehensible instructions, and by the time they're done, the sun is still up in the sky, the tent is standing upright, and Pete actually feels a weird sort of accomplished.

"Wow."

"Right?" Andy wipes sweat off his brow like he practiced it in the mirror to get the ultimate self-sufficient caveman effect, and puts his hands on his hips to gaze upon their work.

"When you set up your anarcho-primitivist commune for real you're probably going to have to make your own tents instead of buying them from Wal-Mart."

"Haha." Andy goes over to the truck for the rest of their gear and water, _yes_ , Pete loves Andy. “That offer is going to go through. And if it doesn’t, I’ll build my own fucking house right here. It’ll be me and my boys and it’ll be fucking awesome, and you’re not invited.”

"I still think you should've set up in Kentucky." Pete takes a long gulp of water and waves the flies out of his face. "Cavemen didn't have houses."

Pete tunes out Andy’s tirade on the conflation of cavemen and primitivists, letting Andy’s voice wash over him and breathing. He knows exactly when to nod during these speeches. He has to grudgingly admit that it’s kind of scenic here. Flat, but scenic. The lake is nice. The house is probably awesome inside. Andy would have bought something with at least twenty spare rooms.

Pete thinks nostalgically about that house years later when he and Andy are chilling outside the studio, weighing the risk of getting caught out by paps against the risk of snapping at Patrick when he ran through the demo of Light 'Em Up for the fiftieth time, demanding reassurance that it struck just the right balance between rough and smooth, whatever Patrick meant by that on that particular day. 

The paps won out, because neither of them actually wants to fight, and both of them want to drink a Coke in what passes for fresh air in LA. Besides, they've been in the studio for a month and haven't spotted a pap once. 

In retrospect, their lucky streak was bound to break.

"Turn the fuck around," Andy hisses. 

"Dude, no." Pete yawns and casually pulls out his phone. "You gotta play it cool. I’m Pete fucking Wentz, they practically trail me." 

“I’m not Pete fucking Wentz,” Andy grumbles and burrows into his hoodie. The dude snaps a shot of Pete right after and then he moves on, because Pete's kind of boring when he’s on his own, without Meagan or Bronx. 

"See? You just gotta play dead and it's fine."

"I told you we should have recorded in Fuck City." 

"That would've been awesome." Grilling. Taking two bedrooms each. Daring each other to skinny-dip in the lake. "You know Patrick wouldn't have gone."

"He's in love." Andy throws a hilarious look around, eyes darting along the length of the street, and cautiously lowers his hood. "And you're in love."

"And you ban modern technology in Fuck City, right?" Pete says in the best bland tone he can manage. "No communication with the outside. Anarcho-primitivism in the hizzy."

"Fuck you." Andy rolls his eyes, but pulls the punch to Pete’s shoulder. 

"Whatever, Hurley." Pete slaps him on the shoulder and then jumps on his back, because he feels like it and he can. "We'll record the next one there."


End file.
